KARA demonstration for PlayStation 3 shows Avatar+ technology

The next generation of video games is here according to Quantic Dream’s “Kara” short movie in which a woman’s every move is captured with a series of sensors. This video was shown this week at a convention in which the creator of the hit game “Heavy Rain,” and demonstrates not only the processing power already intact on the PlayStation 3, but the futuristic live-action capture method being used now by the development team. This method is being touted as more advanced than Avatar, the most successful movie of all time, and that team’s method for capturing with camera cranes.

We’ve seen similar technology used for the movie TRON: Legacy as well, if you’ll remember, with Kevin Flynn being made young again by placing a series of sensors on the face of Jeff Bridges. The technique we’re seeing here uses a series of 90 sensors placed across the actors face – actress Valorie Curry, in this case – and both movement and sound are recorded at the same time. In previous generations of motion capture such as this, each element would have had to have been recorded separately.

This video is just a demonstration of what’s possible today, and as David Cage of video game developer Quantic Dream notes, it’s not only faster to accomplish than any other similar method in the past, it’s less expensive as well. While details on what this project will becoming in the future are at the moment scant, we can expect Kara to be a demonstration only for quite some time. Instead what Quantic Dream will be doing soon will be involving said technologies in yet-unnamed projects for gaming consoles.

Would you like to see an expansion of the technology shown here? According to commenters and attendees at the conference, they’d go so far as to say they’d like the video’s plotline itself to be expanded. It’s just that good! We can expect fabulous things from Quantic Dream in the future!